Optimist Theatre’s just-opened production of “King Lear” – ninth and worst of its annual offerings of free Shakespeare – triggered an emotion I’ve never experienced, in watching hundreds of productions of Shakespeare plays: boredom.

The wheels come off in the first scene – normally a humdinger, here just humdrum. Heading into semi-retirement, Lear (James Pickering) is intent on dividing his kingdom between his three daughters, each tasked with telling him how much they love him before they’re given their substantial gift of land.

Lear loses it when his beloved Cordelia (Malkia Stampley) refuses to play along; having disinherited her, he banishes his protesting wingman, Kent (Bryce Lord). The sisters – Goneril (Jacque Troy) and Regan (Kat Wodtke) as well as Cordelia – then take stock of what’s passed, while wondering what it portends for the future.

Excepting Regan – coldest and cruelest of this lot, and presented as such by Wodtke – the characters living this wrenching scene ought to be anguished; imagine any ugly family drama you’ve survived and you get the idea.

But in a sign of all to come in this nearly three-hour tour, we get little of that. Sure, actors recite their lines (sort of; several actors fumbled them). But they evince little feel for Shakespeare’s poetry and even less for his characters.

One therefore gets little sense of Lear’s story arc, as he slowly devolves from petulance and anger toward madness. Or of Goneril, played by Troy as snarky and haughty, with little of the vulnerability and hurt Lear’s eldest daughter feels. Or of Cordelia, played by Stampley with regal hauteur but little of the love and tenderness Lear’s youngest daughter feels.

This is partly an issue of direction; Lisa Gaye Dixon doesn’t seem to know who these characters are, and she’s failed to impart an overarching vision or make the sort of bold choices around which actors might coalesce.

As a result, most of her actors play their characters from the outside, resulting in overacting and mugging; the supporting cast overacted so much during Thursday’s opening night performance that audience members were laughing at them, even in excruciating scenes like the one in which Gloucester (a bland Samuel White) loses his eyes.

The biggest offender is Tom Reed, who also drew unintended laughs on opening night for his hammy depiction of Edgar as a Bedlamite; Reed’s performance is equally overdone when Edgar presents as himself.

The most significant exceptions to this dismal chronicle are Jonathan Wainwright and Robert Spenser.

As the bastard Edmund, Wainwright exhibits the charisma this character must have, while demonstrating an understanding of Shakespeare’s rhythm; unlike most of this cast, he inhabits his lines rather than declaiming them.

As the Fool, Spenser makes the most of those lines that survived a radical pruning – proving anew that even the thorniest of Shakespeare’s lines can be clear when a good actor projects them.

That’s the sort of revelation one would hope for from a company like Optimist, which claims to be of and for the people, many of whom are seeing their first Shakespeare play when attending an Optimist show.

But even free Shakespeare comes at a price – not just because of the scarce arts dollars that could be spent elsewhere, but also because a newbie who first experiences Shakespeare through a production like this one is unlikely to ever come back. With all due respect to “King Lear” itself, that’s the great tragedy now playing out through yet another lackluster Optimist show.

“King Lear” continues through July 21 at the Marcus Center's outdoor Peck Pavilion. Admission is free. For more information, visit www.optimisttheatre.org. Read more about this production at TapMilwaukee.com.

James Pickering faces the storm in "King Lear," performed by Optimist Theatre.(Photo: Michelle Owczarski)

PROGRAM NOTES

Sound: Reviewing Optimist’s production last year of “Much Ado About Nothing,” I noted how much is lost when Shakespearean actors are amplified; I also sympathized with why Optimist uses mics, given the ambient cityscape noise surrounding this outdoor, downtown theater space. That said, the amplification issues this year were even more distracting than last year; the amplification was so overdone that the slightest puff of wind was projected. Mics cut in and out (Wainwright was particularly challenged by this, and handled it like a champ). And offstage actors couldn’t always bother remembering that they were wearing mics, thereby unintentionally sharing snippets of their private conversation with the audience.

Blocking: Dixon’s staging was an actual impediment. Actors repeatedly turned upstage to speak. In a crucial moment toward the end of the first scene, a soldier planted a banner in front of center stage; he and his prop blocked access to a crucial exchange between Lear’s three daughters. Characters periodically arranged themselves into stilted, overly balanced and geometric patterns rather than moving naturally toward and away from each other; pontificating their lines at each other across these artificially created spaces, they occasionally resembled a parody of a bad stand-and-deliver opera.

Accents: Yes, Cordelia’s army comes from France. But do we really need buffoonish French accents to drive that point home? The Britons in this production don’t speak in English accents, which is fine by me. Why must actors playing the French butcher perfectly fine lines?

The Sense of an Ending: I’ve seen more than a dozen productions of “Lear” in the past decade alone. I can’t recall a single one in which lines get scrambled and rearranged at the end as they do here, in a way that allows Lear to live. I’m sorry, but Lear dies at the end of this play. That’s part of the pathos we’re entitled to experience, followed by Edgar or Albany (take your pick, depending on which version of the play gets done and what message a director intends to convey) trying to pick up the pieces and move on (itself an invaluable component in our catharsis). Following a clumsily devised death for Cordelia – also a deviation from the play, as handled here – Dixon gives Pickering the final moment, after Edgar speaks. It doesn’t make sense. And it doesn’t work.